Business

The Giro and Blackburn boycott may not need continue much longer if their parent company Vista Outdoor is successful in unloading all these brands along with their gun business. They’re apparently, trying according to a story on The Motley Fool.

Between outdoor products and shooting sports, Vista has grown to a company with some 50 brands in its portfolio, and when times were good, they helped create a diversified business that boosted its stock to record highs. But the past year-plus has not been kind to the gun market and supporting businesses, and Vista felt firearms no longer fit into its core strengths, because they will require large investments to turn them into a growth business.

Hmmm, who would want their cycling brands? Maybe Pon Holdings? They have BBB, but a little Giro/Blackburn/Bell, couldn’t hurt, right? Would be nice if someone could breathe some new life into them.

The short version is that former Interbike Show Director Pat Hus is leaving to “pursue other opportunities” and Justin Gottlieb, the former Interbike communications and PR director is moving in to be the “interim show director.” Guess that’s means Emerald Expositions is still leaving the door open for a new hire.

Justin joined Emerald in 2012 and has been serving as Communications & PR Director for Interbike, and Corporate Communications Director for Emerald Expositions. In addition to his involvement in strategy development on Interbike, Justin also managed Interbike features and activations, retail education development, and projects such as the Interbike Mechanics Challenge. Most of his more than 20-year career has been in the cycling/sporting goods industries, on the retail, wholesale and events side of the business. He earned a BS in Public Relations from the University of Florida, where he was a member of the cycling team, and later an MBA from Averett University.

So let see, new “interim” show director, new location. Wonder what other surprises Emerald has in store for us. We’re not even sure what this means, but you can get the official word from Interbike by f0llowing the jump.

Who hasn’t wanted to start a bike company. Tom Richey did it. So did Mike Sinyard. And after Benno Baenziger and Jeano Erforth co-founded Electra in 1993 we thought to ourselves, how hard can this be, really. Well, before we could even answer the question the guys from Pinkbike did it for us. Click the arrow and see just how it went.

In a presidency that becomes more absurd with each day, the Trump administration is now moving to review all of the United State’s National Monuments and Patagonia’s CEO Rose Marcario doesn’t like it one bit. She says:

Our National Monuments were established after extensive public input because they provide unique and irreplaceable cultural, ecological, economic and recreational value worth protecting for our children and our grandchildren. As stewards of America’s federal public lands, the Trump administration has an obligation to protect these most special wild places. Unfortunately, it seems clear they intend to do the opposite.

In a statement released today (Wednesday, April 26, 2017) Marcario urges everyone who loves America’s public lands to contact their members of Congress and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to “express outrage at the Trump administration’s efforts to roll back National Monument protections.” For the official statement from Marcario, please follow the jump.

For 2017 Garmin and turned up their team sponsorship and now officially sponsors five world tour teams and four mountain biking teams. Which teams exactly? Here you go: Cannondale-Drapac Pro, Movistar, Astana Pro Team, FDJ Pro Team and Team Dimension Data for Qhubeka. On the mountain bike side they’ve got Trek Factory Racing, CLIF Pro Team, CUBE Action Team, and Scott-SRAM.

“Garmin started sponsoring professional cycling teams nearly a decade ago, and we are excited to continue our commitment to the sport,” said Jon Cassat, Garmin vice president of communications. “As a leader in cycling technology, we are proud to provide the teams with top- of-the-line products – from GPS bike computers to cycling awareness accessories and multisport GPS watches – for training, racing and adventure in between.”

Garmin will be outfitting the teams with Edge cycling computers, Varia radar-equipped tail lights, plus Forerunner and Fenix GPS smartwatches all around. Kind of makes us want to get on a world pro team, you know, for the smart watches. . . right?

Emerald Expositions, the parent company of the Interbike and Outdoor Retailer shows, had a teleconference with Utah’s Governor Herbert today and based on that call they will no longer be including Utah in any of their future show business.

In light of the outcome of the call today, and the ongoing debate over the issue of public land use, Interbike will not include the state of Utah in the RFP process for future show locations. “We will continue with the RFP process in the other locations that we’ve been in contact with for Interbike,” said Pat Hus, Vice President of Interbike. “Other than removing Utah from the process, nothing has changed from our standpoint. Interbike is committed to finding the best location for the cycling community, and we hope to have a more definitive direction in approximately 60 days.”

We applaud Emerald Expositions for this decision. For the official word, please follow the jump

Pivot Cycles Factory Racing is pleased to announce the addition of Rupert Chapman to the team! Chapman, 24, from Christchurch, New Zealand, is no stranger to international competition ­– he has been racing downhill for 12 years, beginning as a young junior, and has multiple World Cup Seasons under his belt both in youth and pro competition. He is the current New Zealand National Downhill Champion and has numerous strong finishes on the professional circuit.

“I’m really pumped about representing Pivot Factory Racing in 2017 and beyond. I’ve always admired the bikes around the pits and now that I’ve finally started riding them, can say that they exceed my expectations.” said Chapman.

A true working-man’s athlete, Chapman has spent the last several years on construction sites in the off-season to pay for his international program. This will be his first season with full support. “Not having to slave away on the building site while trying to fit in training will be really good for my racing!” he said.

Chapman joins Bernard Kerr, 2017 Red Bull Hardline winner, and Emilie Siegenthaler, a regular visitor to the World Cup podium and 7-time Swiss National DH Champion, on the Pivot Factory Racing team. The first full outing as a team for 2017 will be at Crankworx Rotorura.

We always hoped the next major advance at Strava would be better, easier ways to message and communicate with people we follow (Strava Messenger?), instead Strava is rolling out what they are calling Beta Clubs. On the surface these “clubs” appears to be nothing more than a news providers. Here’s how Strava is over pitching it:

The Beta Clubs mark the first time that content other than an activity could show up in your feed, which is a big step toward serving every need of the athlete. That’s an ambitious goal, and no doubt we’ll be learning and iterating along the way. But we’re up for the challenge, and these Beta Clubs will help lead the way. Only these clubs can post for now because we trust them to be awesome — they are going to show us and the rest of the Strava community what it means to run a great club. They’ll set the standard, and it won’t be long before we open the ability to post content to all clubs and athletes.

The Beta Clubs include popular media, retailers, and product brands Like Bicycling Magazine, Bike Radar, Canyon Bicycles, USA Cycling, Rapha, Clif, and Competitive Cyclist (that’s just seven of the twenty-seven brands listed). Users can “join” the clubs they want to get news from. Then each time the companies blast out “news” it will show up in the feed between rides.

While getting news from brands we care about might be interesting, this really looks more like a revenue generation play by Strava that will eventually lead to feeds clogged with irrelevant advertising. We sincerely hope this doesn’t happen, because we really like Strava. It is our Facebook. And if it becomes as annoying as Facebook we’ll be forced to purge it from our lives and that would be a serious bummer.

How do you feel about the new Beta Clubs? Let us know in the comments.

University bike sharing company Zagster and teamed up with Zipcar to launch the first national, sponsored bike-share program for the campuses of higher education called, Zipbike.

Zagster, which operates 140 bike-share programs across North America — including nearly two dozen on college campuses — will manage the Zipbike systems at all participating universities. Zipcar, which is the largest and most longstanding campus car sharing provider with operations on more than 500 college and university campuses, will launch at participating Zipbike campuses if they don’t already have Zipcar programs. . . “We know that today’s mobile-first, app-centric students value on-demand access over ownership,” said David Piperno, vice president of finance and strategy at Zipcar. “Zipcar programs on campuses improve the quality of life for students, faculty and staff alike by making it easy to access a car only when they need one, and our partnership with Zagster will allow us to offer that same access to bikes.”

Ride on, ride on, ride on. . . For the all the details on the new Zipbike systems and where you can find one, follow the jump.